What's the difference in a multi-strip TIFF and a single-strip TIFF when using the LibTiff.Net 2.3 library

Question

When I'm using the LibTiff.Net 2.3 library I'm confused as to why I would ever want to save as a multi-strip TIFF image. Why not just always use the one big chunk (single-strip) rather then all the tiny chunks (multi-strip)? I think the multi-strip is even a little bigger possibly?

Answer 1

Usually a multi-strip image is a little bit larger (in terms of file size) than single strip. But multi-strip images has some advantages:

• Less memory can be used to process whole image because an application can process on strip at a time. For very large images it can make a difference. See this question for example.

• Random access to image data is less complicated. Some compression schemes like LZW do not allow random scanline to be read. The library must decode all scanlines from the start of a strip in order to decode a scanline within a strip.

Answer 2

I believe the multi-strip TIFF was from the old FAX Days. It was a way of semantically breaking up a single image into parts (or in this case pages). This could also provide a similar function in rendering, allowing the image to "scan in" piece by piece, instead of requiring the entire massive strip before it could display anything.